She read on, doggedly initialling one paragraph after another, until she came to the section warning officers against entanglements with persons of planetary importance. And right there, in a list that included governor-general of this, and assistant general secretary of that, and commander of the other, she found “Altiplano: Sector Commanders, immediate families of, and Landbride/Landgroom.”
Landgroom? There wasn’t any such title on Altiplano. The whole point of the Landbride was . . . her mind caught up with the warning and she glanced back at the heading. “Officers are specifically warned to avoid political entanglements, including liaisons either casual and permanent with the following classes of persons.”
She could hardly avoid a liaison with herself, but—what would this mean to Barin? She was a commissioned officer of the Regular Space Service. Surely they couldn’t hold her Landbride status against her . . . not her . . .
But if they did . . . she hadn’t been a Landbride when she and Barin met and fell in love. She had been just another ensign . . . just another ensign who had survived a mutiny and saved a planet . . . but basically, a Fleet officer. She hadn’t done anything wrong in falling for Barin, or he for her. What difference did it make that she was also the Landbride Suiza?
Come to think of it, had she ever officially informed Fleet that she was the Landbride? Lady Katerina Saenz knew, but she had been concentrating so on helping get Brun free—that was far more important—and she wasn’t at all sure she’d turned in the form. Esmay called up her personnel stats. Planet of origin, family of origin, religion, local awards and decorations . . . the Starmount, she had put that in. But she hadn’t mentioned Landbride.
Feeling guilty already, she hunted through the Personnel Procedures database for the right form, and didn’t find one. Well . . . not that many officers became Landbride. In fact, she was the only one. But this meant discussing the lapse with Captain Solis; he would not want to be surprised by it later.
“Captain, could I speak to you?”
“Certainly.” He looked up from his work, much less menacing than she had once thought him.
“It’s about these forms for a change of status,” Esmay began. “The warnings to personnel—”
His brows rose. “I don’t imagine you’re in any trouble—you and the young man are both Fleet officers. Unless you still think you’re robbing cradles.”
“No, sir. But the section on planetary entanglements—”
“I know your father’s a prominent person, but you’re a Fleet officer—”
“And a Landbride.”
“Landbride? What is that?”
“A proscribed position, it says here.” Esmay handed over the printout she’d made. “I don’t know if it applies—I am a Fleet officer, and when we met I wasn’t Landbride Suiza—”
“Umph. Landbride must be something extraordinary. What does a Landbride do, Lieutenant?”
That was not something she could explain, when she didn’t half understand it herself. “It’s—the Landbride represents the family’s bond to the land—to the soil itself—in the family holdings. She’s a symbol of the family’s commitment to the land. It’s . . . sort of religious.”
“I didn’t even know you were a Landbride,” he said.
“It happened during my leave home, after my great-grandmother died,” Esmay said. “When I came back, we were so busy with the rescue mission, I guess I forgot to put it in . . . I didn’t think about its being important.”
“Yes . . . we were all somewhat preoccupied right then. But you need to report it now. Personnel will definitely want to know, and they may have some concerns about your duties. How much time you’ll need to be away from Fleet, and so on.”
“I won’t,” Esmay said. “That’s what my father said—”
“But religion . . .” He looked thoughtful. “Religious positions usually require some actual commitment of time and effort, Lieutenant. If you aren’t there—”
Esmay thought suddenly of the spring and fall Eveners, when her great-grandmother had ridden out to do something—she didn’t know what—in the fields. No one had mentioned that to her, but—
“It all happened so fast,” she said. “And then I came back . . .” She hated the sudden pleading tone in her voice; and stopped short.
“You need to get it straightened out, whatever it is, before you marry young Serrano,” he said. “Not just because of regulations, but because you both need to know what you’re getting into. And I see here you’re in double jeopardy, with your father being a sector commander.”
“Yes, sir,” Esmay said. “But they knew that when I went into the prep school.”
“But you weren’t then about to marry one of the oldest families in Fleet,” he said. His tone held no rancor, but the very matter-of-factness of it set a barrier of steel between her and what she hoped for.
Esmay nodded, and withdrew. Master Chief Cattaro, after rummaging in the Admin database for the correct form, gnawed the corner of her lip. “There’s a procedure, Lieutenant . . . there’s always a procedure. Let me just check . . .” Another dive into the database. “Ah. What I think will work is a 7653, an Application for Exception, Unspecified, and a 78B-4, an Incident Report, Personnel Infraction, Unspecified, and then you’ll need a 9245 . . . no, actually, two of them. One to accompany each of the others.” Chief Cattaro grinned, looking happier with each additional form. “And it might be just as well to file your 8813—your application for permission for permanent bond—linked to the code tag for your pre-commissioning records, because that will have your prep-school classifications, and of course you’ll need . . .”
“Chief, I’m not going to have time to do all that at once.”
“Best get started then,” Cattaro said. She had the quiet twinkle of the senior NCO who has just been able to dump a load of work on a junior officer. “I’ll just pipe it to your desk, shall I? Or would you rather work on it in here?”
She could always fill in the blanks while working on something else.
“My desk, please, Chief.”
“Yes, sir.
Filling out the forms to Chief Cattaro’s satisfaction kept her busy the rest of that shift and part of the next, along with her other work. For reasons known only to the forms designers in Personnel, none of the forms asked for the information in the same order, or even the same format, which made it impossible to simply port data from one to the other. Family name first here, but last there. Middle name or names as initials in this form, but spelled out in that one. Planet of origin by a code from a table, or spelled out, or by a code from another table, which didn’t agree with the first.
They really did not want Landbrides to marry into Fleet, Esmay decided.
Barin’s message cube—when she finally had time to put it in the reader—was less informative than she’d hoped. He loved her—she couldn’t hear that too often—and he was still waiting to hear from his parents. He was afraid they’d be upset by the administrative decision to make him responsible for the support of the women brought back from Our Texas. It was going to be hard to convince Personnel to approve the paperwork for a status change, when clearly he couldn’t afford any more dependents.